I’m really intrigued by Lightna, a PHP-based engine developed by Magento experts. It’s built to supercharge any PHP application, and because it’s created by Magento developers, it follows similar architectural principles and development practices as Magento—with tailored integration to boot.

Its render times are impressive—ranging from 2 to 12 milliseconds—which makes me think it has serious potential. When I first skimmed through their landing page and saw the term “decoupled frontend,” I initially thought it was just another headless setup like Vue Storefront (now Alokai) or PWA Studio. The people I shared it with—colleagues, friends, and folks from Meet Magento conferences—had the same impression at first.

That was even before Adobe rolled out Adobe Commerce Edge, which (unsurprisingly) turned out to be yet another PWA. But Lightna’s approach is distinct, and that’s what’s got me hooked.

How Lightna Supercharges Performance

Lightna tackles both server-side and client-side performance, not just the frontend like most Magento solutions I’ve encountered. It’s built on this “Coin Concept”—the idea that 99% of your code can be compiled or indexed, ready to roll without caching, as the developers claim.

• Compiled code sits in PHP’s opcache
• Indexed pieces are sorted into buckets like configuration or content
• It all renders through straightforward PHTML templates in a flash

While people struggle to keep backend response times under 200ms, Lightna delivers two-digit millisecond speeds. That’s striking—it’s like a site that’s always cached yet runs live data.

Unlike the typical headless approach that tears everything apart, Lightna integrates smoothly into an existing Magento project. Right now, it supports a full Product Detail Page (PDP) and global blocks like headers and footers for Magento 2.

Other pages aren’t included yet, but the engine’s robust—you can build what you need. If you don’t, Magento’s default rendering steps in. You can even render specific blocks on a Magento page through Lightna.

Lightna Lane and Going All-In

There’s this feature called Lightna Lane that I’m really into. It’s perfect if you’re not ready to fully commit—it lets you migrate specific blocks over while keeping your design and extensions intact.

The docs outline a clear path:

1. Start with new elements to prevent further slowdowns
2. Migrate custom code
3. Then third-party modules, default features, JavaScript, design, and entire pages if you choose

Lightna’s flexibility really impressed me. I migrated the PDP, header, and footer on a test project loaded with customizations and third-party modules, and I barely had to touch the backend—it just worked out of the box.

Of course, Lightna comes with its own design, so you’ll need to customize it to match your webshop’s look. This is especially true since not all pages are rendered by Lightna yet.

Why It Feels Right to Me as a Dev

As a Magento dev, I feel like Lightna’s speaking my language. It’s got all the stuff I loved about Magento—plugins, layouts, dependency injection, extensibility—but better.

So basically, most of the features of Magento that were declared using XML can be found in Lightna but declared in YAML, which I find cleaner. And you’ve still got overrides and config merging. Blocks render in PHTML, just like Magento. It’s like fanfic of Magento made by devs, on the contrary to the path Adobe was taking.

We Magento devs always griped about JavaScript-heavy stuff like PWA Studio and VSF—we are PHP guys, not React fans. Hyvä got us excited with its PHP focus and a bit of Alpine.js, but Lightna goes harder, ditching JS libraries entirely for vanilla JS styled like Magento’s PHP classes.

They say you can add a JS library with a module if you want, but out of the box, it’s barebones on the frontend. I love the lightweight approach, though I’m not fully convinced we can manage without some kind of JS library—at the very least, something for state management.

But maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Lightna already does a great job optimizing the backend and delivering data to templates quickly. So maybe it’s better this way—we get a solid foundation and the freedom to handle the frontend however we like: Alpine.js, Vue.js, or anything else.

Where It Fits—and My Doubts

Lightna’s one of many players trying to improve Magento in different ways:

• Hyvä and Breeze stick to optimizing Magento’s frontend in the same stack
• AES and Alokai push headless PWAs
• Mage-OS tweaks the backend

Lightna’s one of my favorites because it feels like Magento’s logical next step—staying loyal to what we know, but faster and cleaner.

From a business angle, Lane should be a no-brainer—low risk, migrate what you need, keep the rest running. As a dev, it’s comfy and efficient, reusing Magento’s best ideas.

But here’s my grain of salt: I’m biased as a Magento nerd who hates JS. Lightna’s PHP-first vibe suits me, but will merchants, PMs, and customers care?

Hyvä balances PHP with some frontend reactivity; Lightna’s “no JS libs” stance might leave it short for slick UIs—unless you roll your own.

It’s got to prove itself beyond my hype—maybe it won’t pan out as big as I hope. Still, I love that Magento has so many flavors now: Hyvä, Breeze, PWAs, Mage-OS, Lightna. Everyone’s working on its future, and there’s something for every agency and merchant to choose.

Let’s see where it lands.